Stalker, bomb hoaxer a no show at court house

Jessica Grewal
Senior Reporter APN Newsdesk NSW Bureau
Working from Sydney, Jessica specialises in crime/court reporting, filing for APN’s regional mastheads in Northern NSW as well as providing national content for the group.
She was previously Chief Reporter at the Fraser Coast Chronicle in Hervey Bay, Queensland where she grew up and trained.
Early in her career, she was named Queensland Young Journalist of the Year at the Clarion Awards.
More recently, she was finalist at the 2013 Kennedy Awards for Excellence in NSW Journalism in both the...

A REDBANK Plains man, who stalked a magistrate and threatened to blow up the Ipswich court house, has been blocked from appealing his conviction.

Steven Roy Evans, 37, was previously found guilty by a jury of stalking and using a carriage service to make a hoax threat, to kill and to cause serious harm.

It came after he sent a message to the Ipswich Magistrates Court registry in February, 2013, threatening to detonate a bomb outside at 4pm that day "as payback for all you corrupt dogs".

He used a feedback form on the Queensland courts website to make other threats including that he would shoot a magistrate.

The offending followed a series of unrelated disputes with the Victorian court system.

Evans was sentenced to four years in jail, which was suspended on the day of the trial.

The three years he had spent behind bars awaiting the court case were declared as time served and he was released immediately.

He launched an appeal bid but on Wednesday, failed to turn up for his big day in court at Brisbane.

The Queensland Court of Appeal heard Evans had been sent a letter by registered mail notifying him of the court date and he had failed to respond to repeated requests to contact the court registry urgently.

Evans' application to appeal against the conviction and sentence was dismissed.

His suspended sentence is active for a further two years. He also remains on a good behaviour bond.